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SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER. 



HENRY BARRETT LEARNED. 



[From The Yale Scientific Monthly of June, 190:.'.] 



History belongs half to science and half to literature. In so far 
as it aims at the discovery of the truth about the past, it partakes of 
the nature of a science ; in so far as it aims at a represe7itation of 
the past, it partakes of the nature of an art. The Quarterly 
Review. April, 1902. P. 549. 

LIKE other studies, history during the past fifty years has 
been approached more and more from the standpoint of 
science : much effort has been devoted to the investigation of old 
facts and to the discovery of new facts. The zeal for historic 
truth may have been no greater than ever, but the methods of 
attaining to it have undergone marked changes. The ways of 
stating truth have been simplified, and a certain bareness is 
noticeable in the writer who presents his thought only after the 
hard labor of investigation. Partly as a consequence the literary 
" half" of history has suffered, at least for the ordinary reader. 
This reader still finds, notwithstanding the critics, a real pleasure 
in Macaulay. And he does so largely because Macaulaj^ not for- 
getful that history is based on a knowledge of the past, was pri- 
marily interested in narration — he desired, according to the com- 
monplace, to make history more fascinating than the novels read 
in his day. 

There are men much nearer our own time than Macaulay 
who illustrate in their various ways some truths about historical 
work, especially historical work in England. Three of these 
men have died since thf coming in of the new century : Mandell 



Creighton,''' Bishop of lyOndon, author of a A History of the Papacy 
during the Reformation ; William Stubbs,t Bishop of Oxford, 
greatly distinguished for his Constitutional History of England in 
its Origi7i and Developme7it , an epoch-making work of patient 
historic investigation which appeared early in the 70 's ; and, last, 
Samuel Rawsou Gardiner whose life was devoted chiefly to the 
telling of the stor}- of English history from the accession of 
James I. in 1603 through the period of the Civil War to the later 
days of the Protectorate — the close of the year 1656. Creighton, 
Stubbs and Gardiner together with Freeman, Froude and J. R. 
Green form a group of Oxford historians. All of them except 
Creighton were attracted to the annals of their own country. 
Creighton alone went to a foreign field, and chose a phase of 
papal history for his chief work. From this group the name of 
Samuel Rawson Gardiner has been most recenth- on the lips of 
those who care for history, for historical scholarship sustained a 
severe loss when on the night of Februar^^ 23, 1902, Mr. Gardiner 
died at his home near London. 

I. 

Samuel Rawson Gardiner was born March 4, 1829— the day 
that Andrew Jackson was inaugurated as President at Washing- 
ton, D. C. — in Rople5% a small village in southern England, 
Hampshire, not many miles from Winchester. His mother was 
Margaret Baring Gould. His father, Rawson Boddam Gardiner, 
was descended from Cromwell. 4 The boy was about eighteen 
when, in 1847, having finished his early training at Winchester 
School he was ready for the university. He was entered at 
Christ Church College, Oxford ; four years later he was gradu- 
ated with the customary pass degree B. A., holding a first class 
in Uteris hunianioribiis. 

During Gardiner's undergraduate years Froude was for part 
of the time a Fellow of Exeter College. Older by eleven years 
than Gardiner he had already become interested in history, 
having been much impressed by Carlyle's French Revolution. In 
1849 Froude first met Carlyle, and then began an intimacy which 
only ended with Carlyle's death. Freeman, six 5^ears older than 



*Died January 14, iqoi. 

t Died April 22, igoi. 

t Pre/ace to The Fall of the Monarchy of Charles I., 1637-1649. Vol. I. 

P. 

A.uthor. 

(Porton). 

t2F'03 '/ 



Q(^'^'^ 



Gardiner, was settled as a Fellow of Trinit}^. He was dabbling in 
the history of Gothic architecture, and he had already tried his 
hand at some historic features of the Normans whose epoch in 
Kngland he was later on so thoroughly to reveal to his country- 
men. With neither Freeman nor Fronde did young Gardiner 
hold any intimacy. But a younger man attracted the under- 
graduate — William Stubbs. Stubbs was older than Gardiner by 
four years and was a recent graduate of Christ Church, Gardiner's 
own college, though he accepted a fellowship in Trinity. Only 
in 1901 w^as this intimacy broken by the death of the older man. 
The religious controversy which had had its center in Oxford 
during the decade 1830- 1840, was still unsettling to young minds. 
All thinking men were stirred. Froude in particular had been 
driven to historical studies under the impulse of religious ques- 
tionings and doubts. And his later work on the sixteenth century 
was tinged with his ethical ideal : he cared so much for what 
men ought to be that he was not skillful in presenting them as 
they really were. Freeman, Stubbs and Gardiner must have felt 
the commotion, but they escaped the turmoil of Froude, and at 
a later time developed their work with a pretty strict sense of 
historic truth. 

Gardiner left Oxford the year of his graduation (1851). He 
soon became interested in the Irvingites, and in 1855 — at the age 
of twenty-six — he married a daughter of Edward Irving, founder 
of the sect. The followdng of the Catholic Apostolic Church 
gained no sympathy in conservative Oxford. The young scholar 
accordingly was debarred from any possible opening in the com- 
munity which would have seemed most congenial to him. Un- 
daunted, however, he must very soon have outlined his heroic 
task which was to begin with a study of the reign of James I. 
preliminary to the history of the Puritan revolution as far as 1660. 
Many years later wdien in 1882 he was approaching the begin- 
nings of the Civil War, the realh' perplexingl}' difficult portion 
of his task, he wrote : 

Many years ago, as a young and unknown writer I deliber- 
ately refrained from selecting a subject more attractive in its own 
nature than the reign of James I. could possibl}- be. It seemed 
to me then as it seems to me now that it was the dut}'^ of a 
serious inquirer to search into the original causes of great events 
rather than, for the sake of catching an audience, to rush unpre- 
pared upon the great events themselves. My reward has been 
that, whether the present work is well or ill done, it is at all 



events far better done than it could have been if I had com- 
menced with the tale of the Puritan Revolution itself. 

To appreciate this task is the beginning of an understand- 
ing of Gardiner's place as a historian. 

By about 1882 Gardiner had won late recognition as a 
historian of extraordinary powers. People were buying his 
books. Gladstone that very year got for him an annual pension 
of ^150. And very soon he had received honorary degrees from 
Edinburgh, Cambridge, Gottingen and Oxford. In 1894 on the 
death of Froude he was offered the Regius Professorship of 
Modern History at Oxford by Lord Rosebery. This he declined. 
Christ Church led the way at Oxford in 1878 in recognizing his 
merits, and All Soul's and Merton were eager to honor him later. 
Two volumes published by him in 1882 were in such demand 
that the edition was soon exhausted, and he issued in 1884 a 
uniform edition of his first ten volumes. So for twenty years or 
so Gardiner has been well known to a wide circle. He was over 
fifty when fame met him. He had published his books at inter- 
vals since 1863. 

As early as i860 he had published some remarkable con- 
siderations on the position of the English Catholics under James 
I. Three* years later he issued his two earliest volumes, History 
of England from the Accession of fames I. to the Disgrace of Chief- 
fustice Coke, i6oj-i6iy. Only 140 copies, it is reported, were 
sold. The period, as he knew well,* was not a dramatic one. 
He had labored among original documents : and his method was 
a very honest one, but neither originality nor honesty could win 
him readers. Five years later two new volumes appeared : 
Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage, i6i'/-i62^. This time 
500 copies were sold. He had shown two marked characteristics 
of his method : (i) strict study of original sources, with facility 
in obtaining new light ; and (ii) an especial effort to understand 
England's foreign relations at a time when they had been 
frequently misunderstood. His ideal had forced him to equip 
himself not only in French and German, but in Dutch, in 
Spanish, in Italian and in Swedish. " It can only produce con- 
fusion," he wrote, " to attempt to unravel the politics of England 
without understanding the intentions of continental statesmen and 
the aims of continental diplomatists. The point, for instance, 
which caused the breach between James and the Parliament of 



'Preface to Vol. I., Hist, of England from the Accession of James I., etc. 



1 62 1 was the question of the part which it was fit for England to 
take in the war in Germany."* These four, together with the six 
volumes that followed (two at a time) in 1875, 1877, and in 
1882, were the chief means of winning Gardiner his tardy recog- 
nition : yet they were hardly more than the solid basis for his 
future work. Next he had to write the history of the great Civil 
War (1642- 1 649), and finally that of the Commonwealth and the 
Protectorate. Seven large volumes added to the original ten 
brought the story to 1656. Thus four years of his early plan 
had, because of his untimely death, to be abandoned. His 
friend, Mr. C. H. Firth is likely to complete the work.f 

Seventeen volumes are by no means the only evidences of 
Gardiner's years of industry. Quite as many more might be 
named by title were it worth while to recount his editions of 
original papers, documents, and various sorts of records which 
he gathered from their hiding places in the private collections of 
England, in the archives at Brussels, in Paris, in Simancas 
(Spain), in Venice and elsewhere. On his seventeen volumes of 
narrative history his fame as a historian will rest. He taught 
for many years at King's College, London ; he lectured in many 
University Extension centers in England ; he wrote two small 
volumes of history for the popular Epoch Series ; he delivered 
six Ford lectures at Oxford on Cromwell in 1896 ; he tried once 
for all to establish the facts about the famous Gunpowder Plot 
(1897); and he spent some valuable time in preparing a mono- 
graph on Cromwell for the Messrs. Goupil which was published 
in 1899. He did his work chiefly in the British Museum — that 
had to be, because of his materials, his work-shop. Altogether 
he had many interests, though not wide interests. It remains 
to speak of his method and his rank. 

II. 

Gardiner meant to do his tasks so well that they would not 
need to be done again. He is probably the first man who has 
ever been systematically through the Thomasson Tracts J, that 
collection of books, pamphlets, single sheets, and sermons which, 
pouring forth from the press during the years 1640 — 1660, were 
assiduously gathered by an antiquary of the time to the number 



* Preface to Vol. I, Prince Charles, etc. 

t Obituary in London Times, Tues., Feb. 25, 1902. 

X Preface to Vol. I. History of the Great Civil War. 



of 23,ooo. These together with about loo MSS. are bound up 
in 1983 volumes, and constitute a unique set in the British 
Museum. His work in decipliering letters was very large, and 
sometimes of great importance. He relates,— with respect to his 
power of accomplishment — that he once took off in writing dur- 
ing 13 working days, copies from a set of MS. letters which 
cover in print about 250 pages*. His especial study during aU 
his life was the foreigh correspondence passing between the Eng- 
lish court and foreign courts and ministers from 1600 to 1660. 

He was the closest observer of chronology. Classify events 
as they come — by chronology — and not according to the nature 
of the events. That was the gist of his dictum. In his latest 
volumes he seems to be working ahead only from day to day like 
a mere annalist. And even a reader with much interest in the 
period is likely to find Gardiner's prose rather slow — strictly a 
pedestrian prose. 

Gardiner was a marvel of intellectual honesty. That quality 
along with the discriminating judgment of his later years was 
behind his best work. " We have had historians in plenty," he 
wrote, ' ' bvit they have been Whig historians or Tory historians "f 
It was fundamental to his conception of the careful writer of his- 
tory that he should be able to divest himself of his contemporary 
notions. He must live in the epoch which he was studying — in- 
deed, in the very year — and move slowly forwards. He must 
not, above all, work from the present back wards. + With an 
epoch as with a character he sought to follow its gradual un- 
folding from within outwards or onwards. His portrayal of 
Count Gondomar is one of the remarkable presentations in an 
earlier volume ; and his account of the difficulties he experienced 
in overcoming a misapprehension gained from the conventional 
contemporary glimpses of the Spaniard becomes full of signifi- 
cance. § 

History led Gardiner into the heart of the great conflict be- 
tween King and Parliament. His problem in its largest aspect 
was to interpret the real relations between Church and State. 
The constitutional and legal situation was ever demanding the 
closest attentioji. His work might seem to be unsatisfactory for 

* Prefane to The Hamilton Papers. 

i Preface to A History of England under the Duke of Buckingham and 
Charles I. Vol. I. 

tCp. London Athenaeum.. March i, 1902. 
§Pre/aceand narrative in Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage. Vol. I. 



its failure to regard the economic and the social phases of the 
subject. He felt at times that he was only on the surface of 
things. But, as he wrote, " nothing is more difficult than to de- 
scend below the surface to the depths of society : nothing more 
eas}^ than to be led astray into imagining the chance utterance 
of some poetaster or pamphleteer to be the echo of the popular 
mind."* 

His judgment of Cromwell is probably indicative of one of 
his most difficult tasks. A judgment of Cromwell would be diffi- 
cult to any conscientious investigator, particularly so to the man 
that was conscious of having some of Cromwell's blood in his 
own veins. He regarded him " as no divinely inspired hero, in- 
deed, or faultless monster, but a brave, honorable man, striving 
according to his lights, to lead his countr3^men into the paths of 
peace and godliness. ' ' Cromwell was no hypocrite, though it was 
natural that other men should think him one.f Here, as always in 
interpreting a man, he started with the man himself. " To start 
by trying to understand what a man appears to himself, and only 
when that has been done, to try him by the standard of the judg- 
ment of others " — this was his first rule of historic portraiture. J 

Gardiner had not the brilliancy of a Gibbon or indeed of 
Macaulay. He was perfectly free from the pedantry of Freeman. 
Unlike Froude, he felt no need of adjudging this or that character 
until all possible evidence had been examined. And he made 
quite sure of his evidence. As investigators Freeman, Stubbs 
and Gardiner each had the scientific instinct. In an especial de- 
gree it would seem to be true of Gardiner that he ' ' firmly grasped 
the profound distinction which lies at the root of all science, be- 
tween the judgment of fact and the judgment of value, and knew 
that the validity of the first can only be secured if it is provision- 
ally treated as an end in itself, in perfect abstraction from any 
possible application of it."y He contributed chiefly to that 
" half" of history which belongs not to literature but to science. 
His genius was to a marked degree that of the discoverer. 



* Preface to Vol. I. The Personal Government of Charles I. 
t Preface to Vol III. History of the Great Civil War. 
i Preface,to The Thirty Years' War. / ^ 



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